


Beyond the White Rainbow

by NaturalEvil



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: AU - Demon Auction, F/M, Half-Siren! Kyrie, Pet, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-04
Updated: 2020-09-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26278408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NaturalEvil/pseuds/NaturalEvil
Summary: The only thing that was clear afterwards was a stark-white rainbow, hurting her eyes and outlining the crowd before her in a halo of light, standing alone on the stage where she would one day sing, when it became clear that Sanctus had taken interest in her.Nero, she wishes that she knew what had become of him.
Relationships: Doppelganger/Kyrie (Devil May Cry)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	Beyond the White Rainbow

On that stage, illuminated and ornamented, Kyrie sang. Her voice carrying on and on over the heads of innumerable faces like a flock of mourning doves. Each note carried a piece of her soul, as well as bits of her body; her lungs and throat and heart.

As she sang, she moved her hands in modest sweeps, opening her arms to a slow invisible embrace. She kept her eyes on the ceiling, its stare just as brisk and indifferent as the crowd before her.

She would sing Carmen and Ave Maria, her sirens blood humming with every immaculate pull and strum of her vocal chords. As long as she was singing, she was alright. She had long since made peace with her incredible gift being both flaunted and ignored.

She knew that in spite of her appearance, her golden laurel, perfect waterfall braid, and pearl white empire gown; she was only there for the amusement of one person who was never present.

_Listen to my voice, calling you…_

It did not matter how many times she sang those first few words. No one was ever listening to her.

* * *

As a half-siren, and without ever having a will of her own, Kyrie was a caged bird. She had the voice, but not the wings or even a single feather to mark her of her heritage. After every unheeded performance, she would wash, forever confined to the upper floor of the great black palace where she sang.

She would stand with her back to the fogged bathroom mirror; groping and pinching at the pale flawless skin on her back, twisting her head this way and that to see where her wings should have been.

On her shoulder blades, maybe. Or perhaps on her arms, as fine as lace. When she slept she would sometimes dream of feathers bursting painlessly through her skin and taking hold in their rightful place, granting her the strength to fly away.

“Like swan wings,” She had confided once before a performance, sitting still as a pair of white gloved hands skillfully braided her hair, pushing in pin after pin to keep the amber locks in place.

“Or more like chicken wings,” Ms. Gloria joked, bright blue eyes glinting impishly as they looked at one another in the mirror. Kyrie had settled into silence after that, licking her lips quietly, not really wanting to talk anymore.

She sighed at the memory as the shower water ran cold and nettled her bare skin, standing alone in the bathroom of her lovingly furnished prison.

Every door and window leading to the outside world was decorated with a seal, six-pointed like a snowflake. She was told just once that it was unbreakable to demons, and so had never even pushed against the glass to see if it was so.

Sanctus, the owner of the black palace, provided well for her, as she was never really in want of any material possession. Any item could and would be given to her, and all she had to do was ask. She had a room filled with a variety of reading material; novels, memoirs, fairy-tales, and historical texts. She was slowly working her way through it, and would sometimes drop one book half-way through in favor of another.

She also had her easel and her watercolors, her brushes and countless portraits of the view outside of various windows. Paintings depicting early mornings to twilight and midnight. The coffee shop across the street was a dear subject, even though she had never had the opportunity to step inside. She drew her favorite foods from there, the pastries and sandwiches that were delivered to her; reimagined in colored pencil and pastels.

And as Kyrie was a docile creature with bird-hollow bones, she never felt that she could ever ask for what she really wanted.

What she desired was water, saltwater, real water. She wanted to push her feet into wet sand and taste the air from the ocean. She was nostalgic for it in her blood, the sound of wind whistling through her hair and cutting deep into the pores of her skin.

But all she had to comfort her was the showerhead, turned on so that ice-cold water prickled her pale skin to rosy gooseflesh.

Her owner was Sanctus, though in the few times that she had seen him over the years since her purchase, he had kindly urged her to call him ‘Grandfather’. From what she could recall, he had the sort of face and mannerisms that had never been young, as if he had been born with white hair and wrinkles.

Kyrie did not know what she was to him. A trophy in a dust-laden case full of fossilized achievements? Or perhaps an apology, to every demon that had ever been inside the black palace.

“You are lucky,” Sanctus had said to her when she turned eighteen, “No, not lucky, blessed. Many half-breeds never make it to adulthood.” It was not as if he was congratulating her but himself, for being able to keep her alive for so long. As if half-bloods were destined to die young from the moment they were born.

She was only a pet, and did not know how to be anything else.

* * *

She knew what really went on, down in the vast room where she sang, that secret dark place in the bowels of the black palace. Kyrie could hear the numbers even as she was guided back to her own room, muffled and unintelligible through the walls and flooring.

She recalled little of her own auction, being so small and tired at the time. Both she and a little boy named Nero hand-fed pills covered in demerara sugar, which made them capable of little more than blinking and drooling, sitting side by side like a pair of lambs being comforted before they were eaten.

He was still daisy-fresh in her memory, the white-haired boy with the bandaged arm. They had exchanged names and held hands for comfort, yearning for the painless touch of another body; large black numbers necklaced around their throats. She was number 4, while he was 5.

There were disembodied and garbled voices around them, the words slurried and their meaning lost.

The only thing that was clear afterwards was a stark-white rainbow, hurting her eyes and outlining the crowd before her in a halo of light, standing alone on the stage where she would sing, when it became clear that Sanctus had taken interest in her.

Nero, she wishes that she knew what had become of him.

Anything at all, as long as it was unpleasant, she thought with a deep melancholy that made her shake, water rushing down her body.

Used for target practice by aspiring devil hunters, being told to run just as a gun was being loaded. Or perhaps a prostitute, forced to bring salacious comfort to the dregs of the human underworld, his teeth pulled for any misspoken word or simply to make his job easier.

Or maybe he was bought as an experiment, stripped, eviscerated and placed into jars, gutted for the good of humankind. 

She shook her head as the tears came, falling hot down her face, wishing that they had traded places. That it was him who could live her life as a caged bird, blue instead of white. 


End file.
